XXHighEnd

Peter,

When using version w-7, I get a popup error message saying "No Track Given."  Then after several minutes or when I press "OK" it will continue playing.  Pls help.

Thanks

Might that be at Attended playback ? (and only that !)

I'm not using unattended play.  Now when I press OK on the error box, I get another error "no track found."  This problem did not occur with w5.

Ok, so this is what I noticed too, but thought it was caused by something else. Hmm ...

If you want to keep 0.9w-7 you can play Unattended. The problem is not there.

Peter

You're right.  No problem using unattended.

KUOYAO,

45 minutes ago I sat down to solve this bugger, while yesterday I used the log and could not find in there what went wrong. And wrong it went all over.
But not today !!

I really don't know what settings I could have changed. Do you perhaps have a clue ?

And *is* anyone else suffering from this problem ? (you don't need to explicitly test this for me, but it could be that tou ran into it -> Attended only).

But ...
I am beginning to think this is a compiler error or something of the kind;
Yesterday I built in some debug commands, and in the end removed them all. The .exe is exactly as long as the January 12 version, but the files are not equal ...

Could you (or anyone who had the problem) try below XXEngine3.exe please ? Just unzip it into your current XX folder.
I'd put some money on it has been solved ... :yes:

Thanks,
Peter

Edit : Removed the zip which did not help.

I still have the problem with this extra version of XX. Attented play and 'no track given' with the second number of the list. Previous version could hold on a bit longer :)

Leo

Hi Leo, thanks.

Can you please tell me all the settings you use ?
What file type you play (FLAC etc.) ?
How long the first track is ?
How long the second track is ?
And if this is repeatable for that album ?

Thank you very much,
Peter

files are wav (EAC based). Marcus Miller M2.
First song is 4:37.02 , the second is 5.39.02.
I went back to the previous exe, and had the same problem !
Restarted the computer with the previous version, that worked without the error for 4 numbers. I thought some things I would like to tell to Bill Gates....
On your request above  I replaced it with the 'upgrade', and it gives the track error at the same place again. But it plays on, which it did not before the restart.
I also sometimes get a gap at the end of  a number.
I'll keep you posted

But what are your settings Leo ? all of them please ...


and


What do you mean by this (both cases !!) ? it can be important ...
Do you mean the XXEngine3.exe from 0.9w-6 ? do you mean a complete XX 0.9w-6 ? please be as accurate as you can, because usually knowing the differences or equalities brings the solution for a software bug.

Anyway, I myself find it the most strange that day before yesterday I could let each track end up in an error, and now not anymore.

After the error I went back to w7. And then had the same error as when using your separate zipfile.. Restarted the computer and then no problems with the original W7.
After that trying with the new zipfile and got the error again.

Settings are q1 at 4, No appointment, playerprio belownormn, thread high prio, split file at 200 Mb, start engine during conversion, copy to xx-drive, allow format change, attented play.Any more info you need?

No, I think I see all I want to see. :)  Thanks !

Ok, I found something which was a. theoretically wrong and b. changed the other day.
I don't see how it can cause this (but many things are difficult to see), but it is in the area of "No track given" anyway.
Also, this is related to the speed of copying, and as we have found quite some times earlier : anomalies seem to happen often within the first tracks after a reboot.

Anyway, below zip is ready to try again.
I am sorry I can't test this myself, but as you have seen it may take quite some time to happen. Here I'm at a 12th track without problems. ... Says nothing.:nea:

Peter


PS:


Would have lost that money. :blush1:

Hi peter,

I will try it in the next hour or so. In the meanwhile I have found another very peculiar thing with the volume control.
First it does not react during play, which did work with the course version. So procedure is now: stop the play, change volume, restart. I  can live with it but would love to be able to change volume again during play (in attented mode of course)
Another thing came up just now, I went from 21 to 19,5 and volume went down, really a lot. Going from 19,5 to 18 gave the volume at the originally expected level. This I repeated a couple of times to be sure it was repeatable. It is.

So Peter, don't worry, we will find things to keep you from skating on too thin ice :)

Leo

:oops: Typo in the program ! could have been the other way around ... :heat:


PS: At the 29th track here. Still ok.

I think you misjudge this. It is still working, but you have to use the slider. As before ...
I did this on purpose, but right now I forgot why. Something with remore control (but can't justify that right now ... will grab a beer).

Ok, just now (after 36 tracks) it went wrong. But :

As you (Leo) did, I had ticked the "Copy to XX-drive by standard" checkbox, and at the moment it went wrong a first track from another drive had to be loaded. So, this drive had to spinup (takes near 10 seconds I think) ... Also this was a FLAC, and all together there wasn't time enough to present the track to XXEngine3.

But ticking that parameter is wrong for Attended Playback !

It adds nothing for Attended Playback, and the only thing you can get from it is ... not enough time to load the track.
Note that this is not a problem with Unattended Playback, because then all is converted and loaded in advance, and only at the first track the spinup time of the drive plays a role (underway during "loading" the Playlist other drives may spinup, but the first track is then happily playing ... ok, when "Start Engine3 during conversion is ticked"), but which doesn't harm because Engine3 hasn't been started yet at that moment.

Understand ? (I can hardly make it up myself :heat:).

So *this* is a reason anyway.
I will change the code, so that the "Copy to XX-drive" won't be active at Attended Playback.

I had far fewer problems allready, still some however, and now I have unticked the copy to drive. I'll report on tracks that still gave me errors with these settings.

so far no problems, thanks Peter. And now back to just listening for fun instead of waiting for problems. SQ is great, W7 aided extra by putting the B1 buffer of Nelson Pass before the Chipamps.

Hey ... great !
I just laid my Perreaux buffer aside because the DAC can do it herself. Oh yes, that is a she. :love:

A she that can do the driving as well ?  Really I am getting more and more curious about your  NOS!

Peter,

I switched in the new Zipped Engine 3 and still get the same error.

Don't know if this is related...when I play a file in a directory with Chinese characters (unicode), it'll play, but will give me a message saying "Error XXHighEnd-00 : illegal character in path" next time I re-open XX.

Also, if I fast forward XX usng the progress bar on the bottom of the screen, XX will crash my computer (Task Manager won't even engage).

Cheers,

Kuo-Yao

Did you use the *latest* zip ? there are two in this topic now !
You should have used the one from this post : http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=689.msg4966#msg4966

I'll come back on the chinese characters.

Leo, do you still have the idea it was solved for you ?

Yep, so far so good.
Some Window messages after new version of xx, messages like Services not available, but just click and they fade away... And they have not returned today.
Just enjoying the music and SQ

Thank you Leo.

Hi Kuo-Yao,

1. Please read a few posts back too, addressed to you.

2. Can you please send me a track name in chinese ? Send this *and* by means of copy paste in here *and* a copy-paste by email in the email body, *and* via an attachment and copy-paste in a Notepad file. I just don't know how I will receive it.
What I want you to do (when you have the time) is the following :

a.
Load that one track in the Playlist Area of XXHighEnd, and see if you can get the error with that one track only. I hope you can, otherwise things will be too cumbersome for you.

b.
Your track will be in a folder structure, like c:\MyMusic\Dance\The Dance Group\01-First nice track.wav
Now I would like you to copy each piece of that structure separately, so it becomes

c:
MyMusic
Dance
The Dance Group
01-First nice track.wav

Of course you have your own data, including the driver letter !
Copy-paste those lines as how I described before.
From this I will be able to mimic a music track with this folder structure, and see what happens. Probably I can't deal with it anyway because of the codeset I use, but if we don't try we get nowhere.
In the mean time I will look in the program whether I can find a solution from theories.

Another question : I assume you always had this ?

Lastly, please look at the title of this post. Have that in your reply the same, otherwise later I can't find it back. It should have been in a separate topic anyway ...

A lot of questions, but I hope we can solve it. Thanks for your help,
Peter


PS: You can do the copy paste of those parts easily by means of going to each folder (and in the end the file) and start Rename. Instead of renaming it, press ctrl-c to copy the contents.

Peter,

I'm using the newer engine 3 as you specified.  Problem persists.

:scratching:

Can you please switch on Loggin (Settings Area), let it go wrong for at least one time, and send me both the XX and X3 log files ? Please be sure that you send all the X3 files from your session where it goes wrong (look at the date/time which is in the file name). Better send too many than too few.

Thank you,
Peter

Well, currently I really don't know how to proceed on this one. Maybe this tip helps you at helping me what is going on :

At a "No Track given" error, XXEngine3 expects a next track to have been prepared by XXHighEnd. There is 14 seconds to do so before XXEngine3 gives up and presents the message.
Now, when you look at XXHighEnd (Attended) you'll see the selection bar disappearing, which is the time XXHighEnd starts preparing the track. "Preparing" means a.o. conversion from FLAC to WAV when in order. After this XXEngine3 has to do some things as well, and this is included in the 14 seconds. Thus, the time XXHighEnd needs plus the time XXEngine3 needs can last 14 seconds at maximum.

There are a few reasons (besides bugs ! -> appearently there was a bug also, since solving something solved it for Leo) that these 14 seconds can be too short :

1.
The disk where the file has to be loaded from is sleeping and has to spinup. This takes time, and how long depends on the drive.
This reason by itself should encourage you to test with files on the OS disk. Chances are little or zero that this disk will sleep ever.

2.
The drive is very slow or the track is very long (and the combination of course). For example, an USB disk just *is* slow.
This reason by itself may encourage you to test from a drive of which you know it should be fast. Direct SATAII is the fastest (for consumer PCs).
Do not tick "Copy to XX-drive by standard" (at testing this).

3.
The CPU is not the fastest. Note that this sure is not about the clock speed only, and things like second (lots of) level cache contribute highly to the speed. For example, might you hace a Celeron CPU, I'd almost say "drop that".
The CPU is needed within the preparation stage of XXEngine3, and it is also needed within the preparation stage of XXHighEnd when conversions need to take place.
This reason by itself should encourage you to test with native .WAV files first.
Also, do not tick the "AA" checkbox.
Note : To me it seems logic that your CPU might nog be the fastest, because the changes from 0.9v to some later version from 0.9w(-5 I think) are about more CPU activity in XXEngine3. If I am right on this, you should (for testing purposes) set "Split File at size" to the minimum of 12MB. Furthermore you can tick the Mem checkbox (main area) which avoids an in-memory copy, and lastly you could tell the system (again for these test purposes) that your DAC is 16 bits.

4.
Your DAC runs too fast.
When the DAC runs too fast, XXEngine3 will be finished with the track earlier than XXHighEnd expects. Note that the time bar from XXHighEnd is unrelated to the actual playing position from XXEngine3.
To check this, you should take your stopwatch and measure tracks for their consumed length. If a 5 minute track is over 2% fast, you will run into problems. Besides that you will have another problem. :)

Please let me know if you can make it work by means of the above "tweaks", and which one(s) did it, if so.
If nothing helps, don't forget to send me the log files, as I asked for earlier.



Now this is something that really smells to something else being very wrong, most probably related to the other problem;
I really can't think of what, because repositioning this slider actually does nothing. However, it will restart XXEngine3 and incurs for some temporary heavy load. Is this bad ? I wouldn't know why except for encouraging for some additional delay in things. But this hanging up the whole PC ? :nea:

This occurring phenomenon makes me believe you should try another PC if available. From there on you possibly can learn what is actually going on.
But note : Somehow you call this "fast forward" while really it is nothing of that kind. It just skips (or goes back to whatever position you dictate). Now, you could be just clicking besides the slider to skip a piece of the track, or even hold down the mouse button and move it around. The latter will let skip the pointer faster than holding it still. However, this will start XXEngine3 over and over and over and *that* may incur for a total system crash.
So if you are dowing it like this instead of picking up the pointer and dragging it to somewhere else ... don't. Also, don't pick it up for dragging when playback has not commenced yet.

Well, good luck with all, and keep in mind : there still can be a normal stupid bug in there.

Peter

Peter,


Following probable caused numerated in your post and attached a zip file with log.

1. My computer is configured never to sleep.  Also tried OS disk.  Same problem.

2. I'm using a direct SATAII disk (400 GB) and have not ticked copy to XX-drive by standard. 

3. CPU: Intel Dual Core 1.8 GHz 4GB Ram
   - Using 32 bits for DA, also tried 16 bits
   - Tried "Split File at size" to the minimum of 12MB, 100MB, 800MB same problem
   - This PC is ONLY for listening to music.  I have not even installed MS Office.

4. Don't understand about "DAC runs too fast."  I'm feeding the signal to an RME AES32 card
   which then outputs digital via professional AES to a Lavry DA.  I did timed the problem events.
   - Approximately 25 seconds after slider ends and starts from beginning the "No Track Given Error" msg pops up
   - Approximately 60 seconds after "No Track Given Error" msg pops up, msg disappears by itself and second track starts playing


THE PROBLEM DISAPPEARED when I used wav files. 

Regarding computer crash...it happened when I tried to "advance" the slider to the very end of the song while duplicating the "No Track Error" problem.  Don't know if it's related.  Don't have another Vista machine to experiment.

Pls let me know if you need an email of the log.

Peter,

Error just occurred with a wav file!  Strange.

Kuo-Yao

Yeah, and in the mean time I am pulling my hair out here.

With "the DAC running too fast" I meant that it consumes more that 44100 samples per second. Thus, a file indiciated as taking 4:00 minutes, is finished at 3:51 etc.

Could you please measure this ?

Note that the times as indicated in the playlist are not 1:1 derived from the track data, but -depending on your ripping means- from tag data in the file which could be just wrong. In that case the DAC doesn't need to be too fast, but the same problem results.

Looking at the log files I can't think of anything else, than things being wrong in the timing area. I must say though that


this really makes me wonder. This can only happen when the "Split file at size" is set low, so to avoid confusion with this one, now please set it real high again (like 2500). Again, only for testing.

So, start a track, and press the stopwatch when you hear sound (better have some popular music that starts at once loudly). Stop the stopwatch when no sound is there anymore. Note that usually this is 2 seconds before the selection bar turns on at the next track. This is the usual gap in between songs. So, do not stop the stopwatch when the selection bar reappears ... you are two seconds late then. Just when the music stops.

:scratching::scratching:


PS: The dragging of the timer pointer is totally unrelated; dragging it towards the end indeed may cause anomalies. It should of course not crash the computer, so I will look into that (never did it, while knowing things go wrong there).

Edit : Actually I don't think you will find anything wrong with this. I already saw that things are not dealt with 100% right, or IOW all was explicitly made for Unattended (I just didn't think of Attended to much at creating the new method in 0.9w), but in the mean time I don't see how things go wrong.
Additionally, I recall my own not being able to copy it anymore, while before each track would go wrong (which I blamed the compiler for).
But please let me know the stopwatch results anyway, so it can be excluded as the cause !

Peter,

I changed "split file at size" to 2500.  No help there.  I tried timing my song, and some songs appear to finish on time while others seem to finish ahead.  But I thing some of my songs have silence recorded at the beginning and end.  Accounting for the silence in track, I think the timing here is okay.

What is interesting is that when I play only one song, the slider completes its course until the very end.  But if I queue more than one song, the slider DOES NOT reach the end, but resets about a centimeter before reaching the end.

Note that is problem only starting appearing after W5 and there has been no hardware change in the meantime.

Kuo-Yao

Kuo-Yao,

It is correct that the timer stops a bit before the end when another track is coming up.

I found *the* problem though, and right now I am working on a decent solution. Should be in this topic within an hour.

Thanks for your effors,
Peter

Forget this. :sorry:
I found some other related problem which most probably is the real cause. Now I must find in the code where this happens. Won't be today, and for sure not "your today". :)

Kuo-Yao,

Can you try the XXHighEnd-09-w8a zip in here : w-8 Sound problem (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=702.msg5030#msg5030). THat's only XXHighEnd.exe to install over your current folder.

I am 100% sure there still is a problem in there, but it might not be what you encounter.

Please let me know.
Peter

Peter,

Tried it, problem persists.  BTW, I'll be traveling for the next few days, so my apologies if I don't respond to this thread during this period.

Thanks,

Kuo-Yao

The other day I have been working on this problem a full day, until I got dizzy from it. I could copy it my means of starting a 2 minute track followed by a 4 minute track follow by a 5 minute track, and right after the start of the 5 minute track it goes wrong. I must have run this sequence a 100 times that day. Then I was working for over an hour or so to setup things differently, and *still* the damn thing went wrong. I must be looking in a complete wrong direction. Then :

I added som additional log data to the program, and after that I spent another full hour on trying to let the thing go wrong as before, which it wouldn't anymore. This is very odd.

That additional log data is in 0.9w-8a. Would you, or anyone else having this problem, switch on Log Activities, and send me (or post here as attachment) the log files concerned ? That would be one XX file and generally two X3 files. Please watch the session times. Remember, this can only additionally help me with 0.9w-8a. You can find it here once again : w-8 Sound problem (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=702.msg5030#msg5030).

Thanks, and sorry for this stupid bug.
Peter

Hi Peter,

I've attached the log result of two songs I playing.  When the first song finished, the error msg would pop up and after a long period (more than one minue), XX will continue to play second sound.

Also, something is happening with W-8a with new engine.  When I play "unattended," I immediately get this error msg:

"Unhandled exception has occurred in your application.  If you click Continue, the application will ignore this error and attempt to continue.  If you click Quit, the application will close immediately.

Specified argument was out of the range of valid values.
Parameter name: rowIndex."

Kuo-Yao

[posted in both the topics "No Track Given Error" and "w-8 problem"]

Ok, there was more than one problem, and one of them was masking the other.
What tricked me, was that this one problem was about an error occurring at opening a file because it is in use, while the program (with official error trapping in it) did not report that error. So, something just died without notice. A stupid C++ bug in the end.

I will post an upgrade later today.